Battle Song
by claudiapriscus
Summary: Nothing better than a story of family meeting across a battlefield. Doesn't it just drip with the pathos you've been looking for? I can see you salivating, kiddo. Buy me a drink and I'll tell you the story of the Soldiers and Death.


Battle Song

**[[Transcript flagged for review: interview with subject 9581 (immortal). Interviewer: C. Smith. Interview flags: Battle of Miller Point, Immortality (process), Psych-Eval, Policy (discipline), Defection (enemy), _The Brothers and Death._ ]]**

**[[Interview conducted one week following the Battle of Miller Point. Interview location: Serenity Cafe (tavern, unlicensed?) See notes (included in transcript) - C. Smith.]]**

**[[Transcript begins.]]**

_[Interviewer note: Subject is waiting at bar as agreed, but subject is NOT what I was expecting. Subject misrepresented to interviewer in original briefing. Just wanted that in the record. - C. Smith.]_

So you're the propagandist- oh, sorry, I mean morale specialist, excuse me, they've sent down to salvage this whole situation, hmm? Ha, you really are new, aren't you? Didn't know when they sent you down here that you'd be talking to one of them. Bet you thought you were simply getting some schmaltzy piece from a yokel local. And then there's me- an immortal, for christ's sake. That throws a wrench in the plan, because we tend not to follow any one's script. We're like the ultimate impolitic old people. Too old to give a shit, but too obviously compos mentis to dismiss as simply senile. You're thinking I'm going to ruin your nice little propaganda. Don't worry about it, sweetheart- that was a lost cause from the very start. But I'll tell you what. You can buy me a drink or ten, and I'll tell you what I know. Maybe you'll find something you can salvage in that, huh? Maybe I'll accidentally let something else slip, something juicy and valuable in the right hands? It might just be your lucky day, right? You've already come all this way.

_[Subject reminded of MCOJ statutes on bribery. Subject indicated lack of concern. Please see amendment D (expenses), line 4. Subject encouraged to continue. __- C. Smith_ ]

Sheesh. Fine, I'll get to the point. Patience is still a virtue, I hear. Hmmph. Why would you want to talk about this awful war business, anyway? It'll be done and forgotten only a few decades from now, and good riddance. I'll be happy when it's so distant a memory no one will be able to recall which side won. _[Subject reminded again of MCOJ. ____- C. Smith_ ] No, don't give me that. I know exactly what the stakes are here. But you live a few thousand years, and you really start to understand the true meaning of history repeating itself. For one, history doesn't. _[Marcus, for the record, if I find out you set me up for this on purpose, I am going to hurt you. ____- C. Smith_ ]

Knowing the past does not allow you to predict the future. Trust me, if that were a viable line of work? I'd be richer than the Rockefellers. (No, you wouldn't know them. They were rich, that's the point.) This whole bullshit war, for example- there are folks who keep drawing comparisons to this war and that war as if to prove the end- their end- is inevitable. They want you to sign on and believe it'll all be over by Christmas. That's the bullshit. The only thing that repeats- the only thing that's inevitable- are the people._ [Subject asked for clarification.____- C. Smith_ ] And no, damn it, that's not a comment on reincarnation, snide child, because the point of reincarnation is not to keep making the same damn mistakes over and over again. You'd think – people used to think- that given spaceships and ray guns and all the other wonders ingenuity could provide- that people would grow past the urge to engage in mass carnage. Or that even if they didn't, it'd all be...robots or epic space battles or nukes or something a little less up-close-and-personal. Don't know how we were ever stupid enough to think that. Ten thousand years and faster-than-light travel, and the wars still come down to desperate men in ditches filled with mud and blood and bone. _[Finally. ____- C. Smith_ ]  


This is the story you've come for, I know. The way your eyes lit up kind of gave it away. You've got a lot of tells for a 'morale specialist'. You ought to work on that, honey. So I suppose you've heard the story, hmm? That the battle wore on and on and on, until there were maybe four dozen folks left standing, but twice as many wounded? And I'm sure you heard that one side had the medicine, the other side had food, and it was gonna be days before relief came. Well. Dire straits all around, except that some brave loyalist managed to make common cause with the rebels, swaying them with tales of kinship and the true meaning of liberty, no doubt, directly leading to the two sides pooling their resources and pulling through. I'm sure it'll play well back in the cities. Proof that we'll all be one big happy family again, just as soon as the other side stops fighting.

Except that's not what happened at all. Hey, I told you your spin was a lost cause. That was one of the first things I said, wasn't it? But all the same, I think you'll like the real story better- nothing better than a story of siblings meeting across a battlefield. Tell me that doesn't just drip the pathos you've been looking for. And even better, it's one of the few that doesn't end in inevitable tragedy. I can see you salivating, kiddo, don't even deny it. _[Subject asked to leave editorializing to the professionals ____- C. Smith_ ]

Hmmph. Now are you going to let me tell my story or not? Why thank you. So first, let me tell you something about going through the immortality process, kiddo. _[Subject asked to clarify. Sarcasm kept to a minimum. ____- C. Smith_ ]

Oh, please. That's not what I meant. I'm not here to hash out the longevity debate again. Every hundred years, I tell you. It's boring, you get that? And always just as pointless, because the answer will always be no. Oh, don't play coy with me, sweetheart. I could see it as plain as the nose on your face. There ain't enough booze in the world to get any one of us to spill. No more immortals, that's the rule. And after all the centuries, you think we're going to change our minds now? No. So just put that thought right out of your head. But I'm digressing. _[Marcus, your ass is mine. ____- C. Smith_ ]  


Where was I? _[Subject reminded of Battle of Miller Point. ______- C. Smith_ ] No, not there. Patience- remember? That story comes later. So where- oh, right. The process, but not the part you're hoping to hear. So I suppose you've heard it hurt? No? Hmm, funny the things they leave out. So let me make it clear: hurt is an understatement, but that's not the point. It hurt like every torture ever devised by the devil, but it was also boring as all hell. Just you and the pain and the bare, bare walls of the recovery room in between stages._ [Aw, hell. This is so going to get flagged for review. ______- C. Smith_ ] Nothing to do but think about all the years in front of you. And you know the funny thing? It's never anything like you imagined. You imagine yourself hundreds of years older – just hundreds! The reality of immortal hasn't really set in yet, you might say- and you imagine yourself as this terribly wise being so detached from the world and all the people in it. Though you always imagine it as a fairly luxurious detachment, of course. No stone cold mountain tops for you. _[? Meaning unclear. Subject asked for clarification. ______- C. Smith_ ] (It's a reference, kiddo. I bet one of your editors will fill you in.) It's all silk and airy palaces and looking down on the common folk like mayflies. (Sigh. What are they teaching you kids these days?)

That's not the way it works at all. Hell, the longer you live, the more you end up caring. It's all well and good for the mortal type to let future generations foot the bill for their excesses- they won't live to see it, after all- but when you're going to be around for all the future bill paying, well. _[Interviewer reminds subject that this is all well known. Interviewer may have made reference to the Council of Immortals' founding charter. ____- C. Smith_ ]  


It's not just self-interest. It's not. That's the thing. Your humanity never goes away, either. You're still the person you were, just older, and if you think being old distances you from people- hmmph. One of my earliest memories- my original memories- is of my grandmother crying over...something. That part I can't quite remember, but it was in the news. Dead children in the street, that kind of thing, desperately sad but all too typical. When you're young, it doesn't hit you the same way. I was moved by her compassion, but I couldn't feel it. It was something I recognized as a tragedy, but it wasn't my tragedy. Age fixes that. Live long enough, and you'll see your long-gone children in every baby and every grandparent. That's the other thing I figure they never told you about immortality: It never stops hurting. _[Children? Shit. This was supposed to be an easy assignment, Marcus. Not one that was going to get me stuck in hours of debriefing. ____- C. Smith_ ]

You look so startled, but I'm guessing it's not the hurting part you're thinking about. Yes. I had children, way back when. It's been so long you're probably related to one of them. Almost everyone here is. We watched over our families as long as we could...but the slow ships were kind of a genetic bottleneck, you know? And so it stopped meaning anything. It's funny how fast a few generations makes strangers out of family. Bet you don't know of any of your third-cousins-twice-removed...and if you happened to run into one, it'd be more an obscure bit of trivia, not a relationship.

_[Interviewer asks subject about relevance of any of this to the Battle of Miller Point. ____- C. Smith_ ]

Fine, fine. Here's the story you've been waiting for so impatiently.

Imagine the end of a long and fierce battle- but let me help, because I'm not sure you'd ever get it right. It looks like hell and it tastes like death. Everywhere you look you can see the dead and dying. The mud sucks at everything, drawing both the living and the dead down, as if the ground itself is affording them burial. Two tattered and weary battalions have hunkered down in the drainage ditches that crisscross a damned and muddy field. The injured weep and moan and scream for succor, but it's not coming. The medicine is gone and the war has moved on to some other front. There's no relief coming, not in anything like time.

I want you to think about that for a moment, roll it around in your mind, child, until you really understand the meaning of war, because I'm not going to tell you the next bit until I think you've got the least little inkling of what it meant to be on that field. You've been out there, hmm? But only after. You've seen the mud and the blood and the graves- you've seen the cost, but you haven't paid it.

You don't know what goes through your head in a situation like that. And that's important, because this is a soldier's story. And you know what the soldier thinks? That it's stupid. Our soldier never meant to be there. It was almost accidental. It's funny how easy it is to get sucked into fighting other people's battles, child. Funny how easily they become your battles, too. And our soldier believes, you know? Our soldier knows this is a righteous cause, despite the bullshit, despite knowing first hand how hellish war always is. So there's our soldier. Doomed to be the last one standing- or at least it feels that way. Came through without a scratch, one of only two, but the other was some young whippersnapper and hardly counts and isn't important to this story. (No questions on that one? Whippersnapper? Hmm. Will wonders ever cease.) Then there's the bitter fact that as the last one standing, the soldier is going home a hero. There are going to be medals and interviews and fame, just for surviving, which is kind of ironic, considering. I mean, it's not like the soldier has any choice in that. Survival is inevitable. _[For the record: speaking about oneself in the third person sounds just as pretentious coming from a millenia-old immortal as you'd think. ______- C. Smith_ ]

Put yourself in that place, and just imagine it. I'll tell you what runs through your mind: What the fuck is the point? All the people you were fighting for are going to be dead, and God knows the fields you've been fighting over are beyond salvage. Days. That's all you've got. No, that's all they've got, because your days stretch out in front of you like the stars in the sky. You'll have to watch them die. You're almost tempted to walk away, because it's not like you can change the outcome and you're just...tired. _[Distancing tactic? Flag for psych-review. ______- C. Smith_ ] Imagine the longest bad day you've ever had and drag it out a century, and you've got an idea of how tired I'm talking about. Our soldier's no stranger to loss. Think about that. Think about losing everything you ever loved, and everything you ever hated on top of that, too. Next, imagine everything you ever knew being turned upside down and sideways, and maybe you'll have an inkling of what that means. So it's not really the death or the defeat that's getting to our soldier, can you see? Do you get it? It's just that when the one thing that's kept you going all this time is the idea that you can make a difference, well, this kind of drawn-out, pointless slaughter cuts you to pieces. Everyone around you is gonna die, and it's going to be meaningless. It'll just be you and the whippersnapper and a field full of corpses.

Now let me tell you something before you go off making stupid assumptions. Depression, I can see you thinking, and post-traumatic stress. (I don't care what it's actually called nowadays. You know what I mean.). You're wrong, dead wrong, and there's not enough time in the world to adequately correct you. Despair is ugly in any form, but the despair of the long-lived is vicious like no other. _[Definitely flag for psych review. - C. Smith ]_

So believe me when I tell you that it's almost a blessing when someone- say...oh, some youthful whippersnapper- volunteers you to go over the top to try and work out a deal. You give her some shit for it, but it's a good idea. So the two of you climb out of the ditch and squelch your way through the mud, stepping around the dead and ignoring the calls of the dying. You yell "Don't shoot," but the other guys shoot you anyway, of course. What d'ya expect? You've been shooting at them for days, too. Eventually they're gonna give up, because they're doing little more than busting up your already-ruined clothing. You still feel it, of course, but time has inured you to any such injury. So you keep walking. Eventually they seem to get the idea, because hey, you're not armed, you're not really doing anything to them, and they certainly can't kill you. Talking is kind of a last resort, but you both knew they'd get there eventually.

"You're immortal?" is the first thing they ask, and they sound kind of pissed about it, like they caught you cheating. So you both ignore the question, because the answer is blindingly obvious. Our soldier has very little patience for that kind of thing, and launches immediately into a spiel about cutting a deal and how they're all at a stalemate and it's obvious there are no reinforcements coming for any of them, and they've all got to know it. "So the way I figure it," finishes the solider, "we can all either just watch each other die slowly- well, I can watch you all die slowly, anyway- or we can come to an... agreement."

Don't tell me you're puzzled by this. I can see it- you're doubting the soldier's commitment. Seems a little unlikely, you're thinking, to be trying to make a deal with the assholes who've spent the last few weeks trying to put you (well, figuratively speaking) six feet under. You really don't know many soldiers, do you, hon? Most of 'em want to go home more than they want to see the other guys dead. War brings out a brutal pragmatism in almost everyone. So your nice story about common cause? Total bullshit. They'd all have killed each other in an instant if it became necessary- if there'd been anything to gain in it.

Plus, it helped that there was nothing the other side could have done that would have brought our two negotiators down. Immortals are rare but well known, of course, but they had an even better reason to know than most- after all, they had an immortal of their own.

_[Aw, shit. Any chance this is just bullshit? It has to be bullshit, right? - C. Smith]_

Oh, you think that's so unbelievable, do you? You've done your research, obviously. And it's not all wrong. The immortals picked a side, you're thinking. Clear consensus on the Council. And you're right there- after all, I'm here, aren't I? You think you would have heard about defectors. _[Check intelligence on divisions in the Council? __- C. Smith_] Or maybe defections were kept quiet for morale purposes. And maybe they were. But in this case, that's not what happened at all. Here's something that'll make your masters sit up and drool: the Council only represents those of us born of certain processes. There were others, long before us, and of far stranger origins.

_[Shit, Shit, Shit Shit. __- C. Smith_]

Well. I've certainly got your attention now, don't I? Close your mouth dear, you'll catch flies. I wouldn't quite rush off just yet, though. The kind of immortality they've got isn't the kind that can be patented. You've heard the stories of the things that go bump in the night, and have never given them second thought. You should. There's more truth to old stories than anyone ever seems to know. You know the old story about the soldier and death? [Oh, thank Christ. ] No? Not even the part about the flour sack? It's a good one, I promise. Fine, have it your way. It's legendary even to my folk- just let that sink in for a minute. The short version, for the impatient:

There's a soldier who is much too clever for his own good and never knows when to leave well enough alone. He pisses off hell, he irritates heaven, and he scares Death. You can see where this is going, can't you? After that, none of them want anything to do with him. Hell thinks he's far too much trouble. Heaven won't be bribed. And Death...well, he stood Death up and then tied her up in a bag and left her there. Death quite understandably leaves him to rot, figuratively speaking. And that's where the story ends, with the soldier wandering the world. The immortal version is pretty much the same, with a few of the details scrambled- more weapons, fewer flour sacks- and more importantly, it's hell that's scared, heaven that's pissed...and Death who is convinced the soldier is too far too annoying to deal with. But all my years, I've only ever heard the story of the eternal soldier. No one ever said anything about there being two.

_[Flag again for Psych-Review, just in case you guys missed it the first two times. __- C. Smith_]

Don't roll your eyes at me, kiddo. I'm telling you what I know- I never asked you to believe it. Call it a metaphor if it makes you happier. But it's important to the rest of the story.

So there's our soldier, immortal and bone tired, trying to make a deal with enemies that know more than they should. The deal is a good one though: trading food for medicine, sharing the ambulance duties and medics. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't very friendly, but it wasn't like either side had anything left to lose at this point. They haggled over the details, tossed around the minimum required number of insults and finally came to a deal. The soldier turns to leave, but is nearly flattened by the next thing to come sailing out of the trenches.

It's just a name. The soldier's name, in fact, said in a voice though long since lost to some other star, some other system, some other life.

"Dean?"

_[Dean? I thought the subject's name was Helen._ _____- C. Smith_ ]

I can see you thinking _Dean is a funny name for a woman_, and it's only centuries of hard-won patience that's keeping me from smacking you upside the head. I'm not the protagonist in this story, darling. I'm immortal, but I've already told you there was more than one there that day. Our soldier was old when I was still young (and he still calls me whippersnapper, you see?) Still mourning his lost brother even then. We'd all thought he was dead. Well, why else? He told us his brother was dead. It was something of a mystery, even to us, for what could kill an immortal? But he seemed to believe it. That was a story there he never told, but I always got the feeling it was something terrible, something best forgotten. I don't think I was wrong, because when he heard the voice, he froze. He didn't move, didn't breathe, just turned into a piece of granite.

The voice came again, sounding more sure now. "Dean." It was accompanied by the sound of someone pushing his way past his fellows.

"Hey Gramps," said I, 'cuz that's the kind of joke that seems funny after a couple hundred years, "What the hell?"

He ignored me, just turned so stiffly he practically creaked. We both watched a dirty, disheveled, giant of a man scramble his way out of the ditch, much to the alarm of his comrades. Someone was yelling orders at him, but he obviously didn't give a shit- just ignored them and kept on walkin'. It's one of the few perks of outliving everyone. _[Flagged for policy/discipline review just for the hell of it. __- C. Smith_]

So the man's ignoring orders, clambering out a ditch, and his face is smeared with mud. He doesn't seem to notice. "Oh my God. Dean," the man says again.

"Sam," says my old friend, and the word sounds like it's been torn from his throat with fishhooks. And that's as far as it goes for a minute, just the two of them stuck there, staring at each other across this particular bit of muddy field. There was an old saying back in my day for just this kind of situation: Does Not Compute. I've always found it adequate for describing the mental freeze that accompanies a great shock. But it doesn't quite work in this case, because that moment of shocked disbelief only lasts a second before it's replaced with a different kind of hesitation. I told you once that it only takes a few generations to make strangers of family, and I didn't just mean second cousins twice removed. It's even more true in the case of immortality. Time makes strangers of us all. Think about it- if you live totally separate lives for centuries, are you really the same people you were before? I mean, when you chose opposite sides in a war, it usually represents an insurmountable distance in perspective in the plainest way possible.

Imagine that. Losing someone, finding them, and realizing you've still lost them after all. It's a brutal thing to realize, maybe even the most brutal of them all. But these two...well, I didn't know it then, but they've got some experience in finding each other again, even when all reason says it should be impossible. And sure enough, that moment of hesitation ended, and when it ended, it was like it'd never been there at all. They moved at once, like two halves of the same creature, and collided in a bone-breaking bear hug. (I'd told you this was a better story than the one you'd come for). When they broke apart, my old friend's smile lit up half the battlefield. "You're late," he groused.

"Asshole," his brother replied, but his smile was just as wide...and just as visible to the trenches on either side of the field.

Think back to our friends, the soldiers in the trenches, the ones who have pulled through a brutal and grueling battle, who've watched their friends die, who've been surrounded by mud and the smell of death for so long they can taste nothing else. It's the kind of thing you lose yourself in... It makes you alien to your family and makes everything you ever loved strange to you. And then something happens that's so unexpected, so beautiful, so transcendent that wipes away some of the muck on your soul and reminds you of the person you used to be. It's transformative, that's what it is.

It wasn't a truce, after that. Not a surrender or a partnership or any stupid thing involving divided loyalties. Soldiers will often fall on anything to celebrate- the mongrel mascot pulling through, news of a friend's wedding, a kid brother's graduation...anything. But I'm telling you, this was different. This mattered. Sometimes joy is so great it's contagious. Sometimes love is so strong that not even war can stand against it. Sometimes we're allowed a moment of grace- and that was one of them, child. I've lived far too long, and I can tell you, those moments are precious beyond measure.

So if you're going to tell a story, child, don't tell one about loyalists and rebels and politics. Tell the story about the brothers who lost by winning and won by losing. Call it The Brothers and Death, and I promise you, it'll outlive you. And that, sweetheart, is immortality without the hurt.

Now scoot, will ya- and get me another drink.

_[See amendment D (expenses), lines 5-12. __- C. Smith_ ]

**[[Transcript Ends]]**


End file.
